Ubuntu doesn't recognize internal hard drive after update to 24.10

[dragonfly41]

Another idea is to install rEFInd as parallel boot option to see if that loads your drive.
rEFInd can be installed without impacting on your usual grub. But after installing rEFInd you need to go into BIOS to choose rEFInd loader as your first boot option. Then we can see if rEFInd finds the drive without issue in 24.10
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[euphgeek]

I tried installing rEFInd and rebooted into my BIOS, but I didn't see anything other than the usual UEFI disk, UEFI USB drive, UEFI network, etc. And I didn't see any new boot options, either. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with rEFInd to be able to use it properly.

[yancek]

I wasn't sure what that would do, and I didn't want to make any changes without understanding of how to undo them. Especially since it works just fine in 24.04.

Running the different fsck options suggested will either repair the system or not, giving you the same error. Unmounting and remounting manually also should not create any problem. It will either work or not, if not probably the same error.

[euphgeek]

What I mean is, does it permanently change the superblock, and if so, how do I find out what it's using as the current superblock so I can change it back?

[yancek]

You indicate that the drive functions properly when you use 24.04 so the suggested solution would be to stick with 24.04 which is an LTS release and will have support for years after support for 24.10 ends. If you don't have a valid requirement/reason to upgrade, don't do it and certainly NOT from an LTS to a short term release.

If you don't understand the superblock information, you could read the page at the link below to see if it helps. If not, don't change anything if it works on 24.04. fsck and similar software does not 'repair' hardware, it is not possible for software to 'repair' physical hardware. It just marks bad blocks so they are not used. If you don't understand something, don't do it.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1033...ind-superblock

"colord" is not a valid user in my system, that I know of

The above comment is from your initial post. It's wrong. Look at the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group and you will see colord in both. There are many system users not just the users/groups you create.

Manually mounting or trying to mount that partitions filesystem after commenting out the /etc/fstab entry was suggested to see if there would be any warning/error messages.

[euphgeek]

You indicate that the drive functions properly when you use 24.04 so the suggested solution would be to stick with 24.04 which is an LTS release and will have support for years after support for 24.10 ends. If you don't have a valid requirement/reason to upgrade, don't do it and certainly NOT from an LTS to a short term release.

I've always updated to the most recent release and I've never had problems this bad before. But it shouldn't be too hard to format my / partition and reinstall 24.04, since /home is on a separate partition. I just thought I could figure out a solution to this problem or at least help the community by reporting it.

If you don't understand the superblock information, you could read the page at the link below to see if it helps. If not, don't change anything if it works on 24.04. fsck and similar software does not 'repair' hardware, it is not possible for software to 'repair' physical hardware. It just marks bad blocks so they are not used. If you don't understand something, don't do it.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1033...ind-superblock

OK, I read the page, followed the suggestion and then ran the commands. Here are the results:

$ sudo e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda1
e2fsck 1.47.1 (20-May-2024)
e2fsck: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sda1
Possibly non-existent device?

$ sudo e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda1
e2fsck 1.47.1 (20-May-2024)
e2fsck: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sda1
Possibly non-existent device?

The above comment is from your initial post. It's wrong. Look at the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group and you will see colord in both. There are many system users not just the users/groups you create.

Fair. I figured it may have been something like that.

Manually mounting or trying to mount that partitions filesystem after commenting out the /etc/fstab entry was suggested to see if there would be any warning/error messages.

I think the drive has completely disappeared now. I'm getting the following:

$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /cifs
mount: /cifs: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

[yancek]

The results of the mount and fsck commands indicate the drive may be bad. Check connections to the drive. If it still works with 24.04 that would be confusing.

But it shouldn't be too hard to format my / partition and reinstall 24.04,

Just make sure you do NOT format the /home partition if you install 24.04.

[euphgeek]

OK, it's been a couple weeks and I was finally able to get back to this. I was able to successfully reinstall 24.04 and my /cifs terabyte hard drive is fully recognized again and I can access all the files on it with no trouble. It also cleared up some issues that popped up whenever I rebooted the system, making me sometimes have to press the reset button several times just to get back in. So I think the lesson here is that if you value your data and a stable system, never upgrade to 24.10.